A great many different medical device packaging strategies and systems have been proposed over the years. Considerations such as simplicity and efficiency of device placement within a package, protection of device features in storage or during shipping, and unpackaging of a medical device for use are all factors which can drive package design. Many medical devices, for instance, are produced at relatively high volume, but must be independently packaged, often manually, thus placing a premium on the speed at which a technician can load such devices. Many medical devices also have relatively fragile or sensitive mechanical or material features which need to be protected from damage or alteration during the packaging process, shipping and storage, and removal from a package. In some instances, the package itself or parts of the package are configured to assist a clinician in deploying a medical device for use within a patient. In view of the above considerations, many sophisticated packaging systems are now in widespread use and serve functional considerations along the entire continuum from production to end use.
Certain classes of medical devices can have features which, while generally analogous, are sufficiently dissimilar as to justify independent package designs even for seemingly similar devices. One example of this is known from the technical area of wire guides. Many wire guides outwardly appear to be a simple elongate metallic wire, but upon closer examination have varying properties such as stiffness, coating, or microscopic construction. Wire guides can be relatively sensitive to bending and deformation, and are therefore often packaged either substantially elongated, or in the form of a coil. For wire guides having a range of stiffnesses, and other properties such as differing lengths and shape memory properties, purpose built packaging systems are often used for each separate type of wire guide. As a result, manufacturers, packagers or assemblers are often required to keep on hand a relatively large inventory of wire guide packaging systems.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,633,758 to Morse is directed to a catheter storage rack, having a rigid supporting plate upon which spaced tubular guides are mounted and arranged based upon a desired configuration of a catheter to be supported on the rack. Morse is apparently adapted to retain and support an end of the catheter in a “naturally” curved configuration. While Morse may be adequate for its intended purpose, it would appear that the design requires a relatively large amount of material, and may have other drawbacks.